We’ve made it to 2023! As usual, looking back through the year during the past couple weeks has been more work than I really intended it to be… but also a valuable and rewarding exercise. I’ve written over 10,000 words about my favorite games this year, even more if you include the kickoff post, and…

We’re finally here! My Game of the Year for 2022 is Citizen Sleeper, a narrative adventure game by solo developer Gareth Damian Martin with light RPG elements and some of the heaviest and most poignant writing I’ve seen in games this year — and also some of the most hopeful. The game itself is gorgeous:…

Well, It was only a matter of time before this game turned up. How could it not? Elden Ring was one of the biggest titles of the year, outselling previous hits like Dark Souls III by a wide margin and dominating games media and conversation for the months after its release. It spawned a story…

Of my entire Game of the Year list, Signalis might be the most out-of-character choice that I’ve made. It’s a game modeled after classic survival horror titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, set in a sci-fi world and introducing a few twists that hone the experience into something new. While this genre is typically…

Ever since I learned about Awesome Games Done Quick several years ago, I’ve had an interest in speedrunning and the talent, community, and dedication that runners pour into the hobby. However, I know myself well enough to understand that I’ll probably never be able to personally invest the necessary time and energy to participate in…

Norco is the debut title from studio Geography of Robots, a point-and-click adventure game about a young woman returning to her hometown of Norco, Louisiana, an old company town on the outskirts of New Orleans. It works just as deftly in metaphor as it does in actual storytelling, and its writing is beautiful, haunting, hilarious,…

Many of the games on this list so far have leveraged nostalgic art styles and ideas as a way to evoke certain feelings; Last Call BBS is the first on my list that tries to communicate someone else’s nostalgia to a hypothetical person who may not be old enough (or connected to the right subcultures)…

At first glance, Tunic seems like a straightforward adventure game, reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda and the visual stylings of classic computer RPGs. It has a brightly colored art style, with golden sunlight spilling across its tidy isometric angles at a dramatic skew, both cute and somehow eerie. But beyond this exterior, there’s a…

It’s rare to encounter games that can effectively evoke nostalgia while retaining their own identity and still appealing to modern sensibilities. It’s not hard to imagine why: nostalgia is incredibly subjective and personal, and is almost always rosy and exaggerated. One person’s favorite media from their childhood may hold up to them, but that doesn’t…

Sephonie is a narrative-heavy mashup of puzzles and platforming created by Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kitakka, the developer duo behind the beloved Anodyne games (as well as numerous other small works in various media). Their work has a reputation for being avant-garde and sometimes metatextual, consisting of expressionistic art and writing with a distinctive voice….